Brian (0s):
Coming up on the Get Lean, eat Clean podcast,
Robb (3s):
Right? What folks oftentimes miss is that if we are eating in a way that is stressful, then the liver will still dump plenty of glucose into our system. If, if it's sensing that we're, we are under stress, and this is what, interestingly where undereating eating two in infrequently, I'm a big fan of, of time restricted eating and whatnot. But all of these things can be stressors, right? And when we start daisy chaining, you know, low carb plus intermittent fasting plus one meal a day, like something that could have been, and, and again, it depends on the person. Like if you were 70 pounds overweight, type B computer programmer, pretty sedentary, that might be a great protocol until you get down to the level of leanness that you are at now.
Robb (53s):
And then that is maladaptive now. Like you might need to eat more, more frequently to, to just tell your body like, Hey, we're good. Like, we're not actually starving. Like we're, we're plenty of food is coming in. We don't need to be in a stress state and whatnot. And so those are the things then that I, I think you start looking at. And it's funny, this, I don't agree with a ton of the repeat stuff, but I, I think that they're onto something in that a lot of folks end up undereating. And this is a, you know, in this weird circularity deal, low carb is really easy to undereat on, which is one of the benefits of Using it as a tool to, to lose body fat initially, you know, and to, to potentially restore metabolic health.
Robb (1m 40s):
But if it's taken too far than it, it, it could be maladaptive for the individual for sure.
Brian (1m 48s):
Hello and welcome to the Get Lean E Clean podcast. I'm Brian Grn and I'm here to give you actionable tips to get your body back to what it once was, five, 10, even 15 years ago. Each week I'll give you an in depth interview with a health expert from around the world to cut through the fluff and get you long-term sustainable results. This week I interviewed the New York Times bestselling author of Paleo Solution and Wire to Eat podcast, host of Healthy Rebellion Radio and co-founder of LT Rob Wolf. We discuss Rob's current diet along with advantages of tracking HR-v, the problems with Undereating health markers to optimize evaluating my own blood work, along with the importance of minerals and is one tip to get your body back to what it once was.
Brian (2m 37s):
This was my second time around with Rob. Really enjoy the interview. I hope you do too. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the show. All right. Welcome to the Get Lean e Clean podcast. My name is Brian Grn, and for a second time around, I'm Rob Wolf on Welcome to the show.
Robb (2m 55s):
Great to be back. Thanks for having me.
Brian (2m 58s):
Yeah, thanks for coming on. I think I was looking back last time you came on, it was August of 2021, so it's been, yeah, like a year and a half. Okay. So what my first question would be is how are things going since then? I mean, we talked last. Anything new coming out on the horizon for yourself? Just to let people know,
Robb (3m 23s):
You know, we moved to rural Montana, which we were discussing my, my abysmal internet before getting that pressing play on this thing. So that's fairly new, really enjoying the area. My kids like it, my wife likes it. They did not enjoy Texas all that much. The, the everybody grew up in the mountains, basically that part of my family. And so, although Texas is awesome, the relative flatness and relative heat and humidity were not winners for my family. When my kids found out that it snows in Texas about once every 30 years, they were like, this is not gonna work. So fortunately everybody stuck with me and didn't abandon me, and, and were in, were in the Kalispell area of Montana and everything's going really well.
Brian (4m 11s):
Great. Yeah, and, and I was just thinking like you wrote the book The Paleo Solution, right? That was that your first book? Right?
Robb (4m 19s):
That was the first one. Then Wired to Eat and then Sacred Cow is the most recent one, which deals with the kind of health, environmental, and ethical considerations of a meat inclusive food system. Yeah.
Brian (4m 32s):
Got it. And I guess my question would be, because like, you know, you've been in the health game for a while now, including myself as well, have, like, since you wrote that first book, like what, how has your view, has it changed and, and evolved over time? And I'm just curious to know like, cuz you're just seeing this a lot with, you know, it happens obviously with everyone I think to some degree, but what has changed and, and in what way?
Robb (4m 56s):
Well, the world has definitely gotten crazy. I mean, crazy er, you know, there and, and there's all kinds of like politic political landmines that one could step in with with that. But I guess one thing that I've, I've noticed when, when I hit the scene pretty pretty early, like my blog went up the end of two thousand6@rubble.com and I, I just, I didn't really have a plan for it other than topics that I found interesting that I thought might be helpful to people I would start writing about. And it was quite different than say, like, if you look at Mark, mark Sissen had a plan for what he was doing. Like he, he would cover these very specific topics and he did a phenomenal job, but he had a plan towards like monetizing what he was up to and kind of aggregating bandwidth and everything, which is really smart.
Robb (5m 49s):
I didn't have the wherewithal to, to do that, but I, I ended up developing a really high traffic website. Like I, there was a point where I, I had a remarkable amount of traffic to my website, and I think it was because there, there was this time when Google rewarded people doing original content that was valuable to folks. And that has subsequently changed in some really interesting ways. But the, the, there was a time when I, I think that one could have a pretty good footprint in this health and wellness space by just earnestly wanting to help people and being curious and, you know, getting in and, and creating some, some ostensibly good work.
Robb (6m 32s):
One thing that I've noticed that has changed is if you really want to garner some bandwidth, the algorithms, whether we're talking about Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, to a lesser degree I believe, but controversy and extremism wins. Like the more over the top ridiculous crap that you can slap against the wall, it, it seems like the better that things do, right? And I can be a knucklehead and I can get into, you know, spirited debates and, and stuff like that, but I just can't do the, like, this is the one and only way to eat and everything else sucks.
Robb (7m 14s):
And, you know, there's no nuance in the world and I, I just can't do that and or I can't do it. Well, it, it just, part of my soul dies even contemplating doing that. So that's been a really big shift and I, I still think I've, I've been able to maintain some relevancy just trying to do good brick and mortar basic, you know, like, here's a new study and here's what it means. Or maybe, you know, some insight into different health topics or what have you. But it is one thing that has really changed is that the, the landscape of growing and building an online business and, and having, you know, reach in an online format has shifted to reward people who are extreme and dogmatic.
Robb (7m 58s):
And that's been weird. And I'm not entirely sure how to navigate that. Like, part of me is, has been of the mind to put a gone fishing sign on all of my front facing, you know, web interface and just be done, you know? But I still feel like I help some folks. I still feel like I've got a few original ideas that I, I wanna flesh out and see if I can get out into the world. And, and so I, I don't know if that a hundred percent answers your question, but that, that has definitely been a profound change from when I first landed in the, the online arena where just simply earnestly trying to help people and being curious and trying to generate some original content that was enough to have a good footprint and to, to make a difference.
Robb (8m 41s):
Whereas now you seem to need to do all kinds of kind of weird, ridiculous stuff to really have an impact.
Brian (8m 48s):
Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. And it's interesting you talk about being sort of on extremes, and I think you're sort of seeing that like within the health space where gosh are, you know, you gotta be a certain, you have to eat a certain way, right? Like are you a carnivore or are you a vegetarian? And it's like, it's, it's like extremist on one under the other and it, now you're seeing it a little bit where it's getting dialed back a little bit. I don't know what your thought is on that, like where, you know, for example, even for myself, like I was fairly low carbon fasting for a while, I've been doing some self experimentation and introducing some whole food carbs, and you're seeing that with like, you know, Saladino and some others.
Brian (9m 30s):
I guess what is your, what is your thought on that and how, you know, I guess what's the landscape of eating as far as is is are people just more confused or, or like, I don't know, I guess what, what are your thoughts around, you know, sort of being on one end of their spectrum or just li laying right in the middle?
Robb (9m 47s):
Man, I think the really cool thing is that unlike any other time in history, we have access to information and a process of self experimentation that you can unravel things that we, we even, like 10 years ago, I wouldn't have, have thought of unraveling. And, you know, that, that's kind of a funny piece. Like my diet has shifted probably a bit more carnivore leaning over time, mainly because I, I saw some people like Jordan Peterson, McKayla Peterson, like, I don't know if you can see, but like I have some rheumatoid arthritis in, in part of a hand.
Robb (10m 27s):
And, and I had a pretty good flare at the beginning of this year. Like I had to go on some prednisone and it would, I, I wasn't sure if we were gonna be able to stomp the thing back. And I realized that dairy was causing that. And so I, and it's funny because dairy doesn't cause blood sugar issues for me, it doesn't overtly seem to cause gut issues, but I clearly when I, upon removal, like a bunch of hand problems that I had ended up resolving, so, and I noticed that some GI problems related to like fiber and, you know, plants basically like broccoli and kale and spinach and stuff like that.
Robb (11m 8s):
Like, I just don't do that well with it. And I've never really done that well with it, but it, it's been this thing where it's like, oh, you should eat a lot of vegetables. And that always made sense to me. So I've kind of gone the opposite direction per perhaps of, of what you've done and I've seen a health improvement. But what was cool about that is it was just some simple experimentation, like I just tinkered with it and, you know, do I look, feel, and perform better? Yes. Okay, great. Well then keep doing what you're doing. If you don't, like, if you see some retrograde performance or you don't feel as good, then maybe we should try something different. And I, I've seen both on the, the carnivore at low carb and the vegan side of this story where people will religiously attach themselves to something and that that dietary approach isn't working and their health is clearly failing, it's clearly going in a bad direction, but they're so like wedded to this idea that they can't let go of it.
Robb (12m 4s):
So I do think that there are more options, more ideas, more, you know, differing opinions than there's ever been. But then when you look out at the landscape of, of the world that we exist in, there are people that thrive in all of those different kind of ecological niches, you know? And so what that tells me is that although there's a lot of commonality with folks, there's oftentimes some remarkable differences too. And so when I'm more hopeful, I, I envision a world where people are able to customize what they're doing and they, they can find a community that can help support them in that, that process. Maybe it's a, you know, like the, the circle i I tend to travel in is a little more on the low carb, paleo keto carnivore scene.
Robb (12m 51s):
And so we, we do a, I think a pretty good job of supporting people in, in something like that. And then maybe somebody else finds that, you know, if it fits your macros kind of deal. Like they don't need to worry so much about the composition of the food, just but to be very steely-eyed about the macronutrient ratios. And they do really well with that. So I, I think that there's a cool opportunity that we can help customize just about anybody's needs for what they have going on. Like there's, there's something that will fit somebody or we can do iterations of it and whatnot. But what is kind of weird about that again, is just that the, the kind of extremism that that pops up, you know, it's, if you get really deep into the, the legit carnivore scene, it's like if you wanna have, like we, this rural Montana area has amazing apples, like in the fall.
Robb (13m 46s):
Oh wow. The apples are just off the chain. God, they're so good. And I do pretty well eating a little bit of apples. I don't, I don't do a ton of 'em, but like I'll, I'll eat them raw, I'll stew them, I'll make some apple sauce out of 'em. And by God, one, I feel pretty good with that. And then two, I would say, even if I took a little bit of a health hit, it's like, okay, every fall I'm still gonna have some apples because goddamn they taste good, you know? And, and, but there are folks in the, the carnivore scene, they're like, well, plants are trying to kill you and this and that and the other. And, and it's kind kinda ridiculous. So again, I just think that there's a cool opportunity that if people need to, if they have some health issues or they're trying to optimize their performance, health, longevity kind of parameters or whatnot, there's so many cool options to experiment with.
Robb (14m 42s):
I think the danger there though is the real powers just remaining objective about what you're assessing. You know, it, it's like, do you, if you do CrossFit, like do your CrossFit wads go better? Is your recovery better? If you track sleep, is your sleep improving? And stuff like that. Like that's all good. Those are great measurable things that tell us that we're on a good, good, you know, path. And then if the flip side of that is happening, if we aren't sleeping well, if we're not recovering, if we have retrograde performance, then we should probably reassess what we're doing nutritionally and look at our lifestyle and whatnot. And I, I think that there's kind of a unique opportunity in history that we've never had before because we do have access to all this information and all these different ideas and whatnot.
Robb (15m 27s):
But I maybe when I get inbound emails from folks asking questions, one of the big ones that I get is kind of career path. Like, what should I become a health coach? Should I do this? Should I do that? Like, I get a lot of questions related to that. And the other one is I'm really confused because I listen to like TCO and Campbell talk about veganism and the China study, and it seems really compelling. And then I listened to Dr. Sean Baker and like he's big and strong and jacked and you know, and it, and it, and it, it, and I think that what people need to do is, is just figure out what they want to achieve out of their health and wellness and then pick something and have some quantifiable benchmarks.
Robb (16m 14s):
Like, like for me, I have some performance metrics around what I do with Brazilian jujitsu, both strength and kind of cardiovascular capacity and, and then just how I sleep. Like I, I do track my HRV every morning, and so long as everything continues to look pretty good with that, then I keep doing largely the same thing. Every once in a while I do something different. Like I put in some low dose naltrexone, which is, it's a pharmaceutical that, that blocks the opiate receptors in the brain and you do a very low dose of it. And, and what it does is for a, a transient period of time, the body is not sensing any of our endogenous opiate production.
Robb (16m 57s):
Hmm. So it ramps that up and then what it does is it modulates the immune response. It actually has proven to be a really powerful autoimmunity and potentially a cancer therapeutic. And so for my gut and other autoimmune issues like this, low-dose naltrexone was a huge bo for me. And it was just another one of these things that I, I dropped in to tinker with to see how I would, would do with it, but I had some really clear parameters about how I would assess it. You know, my sleep improved, my performance improved, recovery improved. So it's like, okay, yeah, this is a win.
Brian (17m 32s):
Yeah, I think you make a lot of great points. I always talk about self experimentation and, and like you said, I think it, it nowadays you can be confused. I mean, like I even myself, and I'm sure you've gone through it where like, you know, you have a podcast, a Healthy Rebellion Right? Is a healthy, healthy rebellion radio. Right. Which I do listen to from time to time, and it's like you guys do more of sort of answer questions and you know, sort of a q and a format. But like for me, I have all different types of guests on, I, I can go from a carnivore to the next week. I got, you know, someone from Bioenergetics, you know Jay Feldman who was on, right? Yeah. Who was on Brad Kern's podcast for a while.
Brian (18m 14s):
And so he's taught, you know, so, and the advantages of carb. So it can be all confusing, I think, like you said, I think most importantly it's, you know, what are you trying to achieve? And, and then from there, you know, measure something like take do some blood tests and, and things like that. Like, I like sort of my experiment going on right now is I did a big blood panel and sort of started implementing mainly fruit into my diet and just increase the carbs and the calories. Cause I did find that with fasting and eating one to two meals per day, I was tracking it for a bit. I'm, I just wasn't eating enough.
Brian (18m 55s):
I don't know if you find that, but I'm like getting probably, I was probably getting averaging maybe maybe
Robb (19m 3s):
1500. Yeah,
Brian (19m 4s):
I was just gonna say 1500 to 2000 calories, But, you know, not, but going throughout my day, not feeling hungry really. Right. Just waiting and having maybe a meal in the middle of the day, which is like eggs and avocado and cheese, and then have a bigger meal. The last thing that was it, but I was like, God, I'm just not consuming enough. So now I've been implementing a third meal, which has been interesting. And mainly fruit in that meal and maybe some codish cheese or yogurt, you know, some quality. My wife actually just made co made our own cottage cheese. I'm like, why don't we learn how to make this because it's pretty expensive to buy like a quality cottage. Do you guys make your own like yogurts or cottage cheese or not?
Brian (19m 45s):
Well now you're not doing dairy, but I
Robb (19m 48s):
Still do for my kids. Okay. And we actually just, so I do find with a goat dairy, interestingly, so I think it may be that like a one, a two deal. But we just in the fall got a line on some good goat dairy and so we, we started doing some, some goat yogurt primarily. Yeah. Yeah.
Brian (20m 6s):
Have you done it with the next step is there's a farm about 45 minutes away from here, and I used to buy raw dairy, raw milk a bunch, and that's the next step is to do it with the raw milk.
Robb (20m 17s):
Right, right. Yeah. That's what we were doing. And, and you know, for me, any type of bine dairy, other than like cream and butter gives me problems. But like sheep, goat, camel, can you do
Brian (20m 30s):
Raw? Are you fine on raw
Robb (20m 35s):
Bau vine dairy? No. Like, it doesn't matter if it's, it's raw and milked by the Dalai lama or, you know, it's Bau vine dairy. I, I just, and probably because of a, a lifetime of dairy exposure plus some gut issues, like I've just allowed that kind of molecular mimicry, like cross reactivity to, to set up shop and, and be a problem. I can't really do eggs much anymore either. Like a react egg.
Brian (21m 1s):
Oh, interesting. Yeah, yeah,
Robb (21m 3s):
Yeah.
Brian (21m 4s):
Yeah. So I guess going back to, to your points, is it, it is sort of, you hate to say this, but people ask questions, they're like, well, it depends on, right, that's depends on who you are. You're, and like even genetic profile, like I, I did a, I did a gene test a while back and I have some, I don't know if it's say mutations, but like I have some gene snips that are, I am not as good assimilating saturated fat as other people, individuals, which was interesting cause I talked to someone about that. He's like, you might wanna cut back, not have maybe a ribeye every other night, you know, have a leaner cut of meat, which I don't enjoy as much, but, and just see how that, that plays out.
Brian (21m 46s):
So it is such a nuanced thing.
Robb (21m 49s):
Right, right. And I, I do, I've been really, not suspicious, but underwhelmed by like the, the, a lot of the quantified self stuff. So like, you do your 23 and me, they give you a readout. Like I I I, I haven't found very much of that stuff, all that helpful. You do a gut microbiome test and your gut biome changes constantly, right? Like you're, when you take the gut microbiome test, you're taking a picture of what is a movie, you know, for, for one thing. And so I've been pretty under one with that. But there's, there's a little bit of stuff on the, on the periphery, gosh, what are they calling it?
Robb (22m 29s):
The, the, not the omega zone, but it's basically where they're using some machine learning and they're taking everything, your genes, your lipids, your gut microbiome, if you can track some things like basic inflammatory markers, and then you plug in your HR-V. But this stuff is still mainly happening at the laboratory level, right.
Brian (22m 54s):
But
Robb (22m 55s):
The, there are folks that are able to then once they plug all that data in, let's say you're just tracking HRV daily, they can tell four or five days before you get a cold when you're starting to get the cold, you know, so they'll start seeing some changes happen. It's like, oh, this is consistent with, you know, the pattern where somebody's been exposed to a cold virus or, you know, covid or something like that. And so you should take XYZ steps to, you know, zinc ascorbate and vitamin C and this and that and the other. And, and you're able to kind of stamp that out, think the next five or 10 years we will start seeing some legitimate insights from machine learning and doing some of this quantified self stuff.
Robb (23m 40s):
But the, thus far I've been really underwhelmed with it. To date, I've found a predictive value to be really kind of piss poor relative to just getting in and doing some self experimentation. You know, it's, it, it's like, do I do better with or without some carbs? You know? And the, the time spent tinkering with that would provide more benefit, you know, the three weeks spent tinkering with it than the genetic testing. And, and you know, you know, fizzing over, well, what do I do with this now? You know, it's like, well, you still need to get in and experiment and see what it does clinically.
Brian (24m 16s):
On that point, why don't we talk about some of maybe the, the, the measurements that are worthwhile to people because you can, gets caught up in all this, you know, these, like you said, microbiome tests and things like that. I know you mentioned hrv. Maybe explain to some people who don't understand what that is, what, what that is and how they can measure that.
Robb (24m 35s):
Yeah. Heart rate variability is this measure of literally the, the chaos mathematics of the heart and a healthy heartbeat under at rest conditions will, it will speed up and it will slow down in this kind of fractal, chaos, mathematics kind of, kind of pattern. And, and this was discovered largely in the old Soviet Union when they were looking at cosmo knots and like their adaptation distress. And it, what what's kind of interesting there is that a well trained healthy heart at rest has a lot of variation. It'll speed up, it'll slow down.
Robb (25m 15s):
But then when you start training, if you start doing some exercise, it entrains to the workload that you are, are, you know, putting out very, very precisely. And it, it really matches that quite well. Whereas an unhealthy heart, like when people are, are nearing the end of like congestive heart failure at rest, that individual is highly metronomic and, and they, they have no chaos variability or very little chaos variability in their heart rate. And if they're exposed to any type of work demands, ironically the, the heart rate becomes kind of erratic and, and chaotic. It, it doesn't match the, the work demands all that well.
Robb (25m 56s):
So HRV pretty broadly is a measure of our total allostatic load, like our total stress load. It's kind of a one stop shop for getting a sense of psychological stress, sleep stress, you know, workload stress and, and it kind of nests all under that heart rate variability score. And this is another one of these things where I think the early iterations of tracking HR V weren't that great and even still like, like I like the aura ring. I, I, I like it a lot. I think it's a fantastic tool. But that thing would drive me crazy because I, I would sit down in the evening and start reading a book to start winding down and the aura ring would sense me reading the book as thinking that I was going, trying to go to sleep, but I didn't fall asleep.
Robb (26m 48s):
And so then it would ding me, it would negatively impact my sleep score saying that I had sleep latency. And so then I would take the aura ring off, put it on my, my nightstand while I read and then put it back on when I went to sleep. And so I had to start doing these kind of weird workarounds and, and stuff like that. And currently I use this platform called Morpheus to, to track HR V and also to use while, while I do my, my physical training to keep an eye on what my heart rate is during the, the training session. And I think that it's, it's just in the last 10 years these platforms have improved. So Just remarkably, I mean the user interface just on our phones are, are so much better than what they used to be.
Robb (27m 32s):
But I think even their ability to kind of sift through thet leaves a little bit like coaches that that use HR V to, to work with athletes frequently, they will stop telling the athletes what their HRV score is for that day. Cuz it doesn't always 100% tell you people will start performing based off of what their HRV score is. And so it's like, oh, your HRV score doesn't look that good. And so people will, you know, underperform and stuff like that. So you can use it really broadly to get a sense trends. Like if you are peaking for an event and your HRV score goes from, you know, you've been green, green, green, and then you get orange, orange red, it starts, you, you start getting this trend that you're getting into overreaching over training, which can be perfect.
Robb (28m 21s):
If you're peaking for an event, you're like, okay, I'm gonna string together four days of overreaching and then I'm gonna taper and then compete. That, that may be a perfect thing, but HRV just broadly gives us a sense of where we are on a recovery perspective.
Brian (28m 37s):
Got it. Yeah. Cuz I was using the whoop for a while there. Yep, yep. So that, that does it, there's quite a bit of these wearables now and, and like you said, you can sort of, I don't wear it anymore really, but cuz it's like it gives you sleep scores and stuff and you're like, God, I felt like I slept well and it's time. Right. So I I think with, you gotta take those with a great assault. Would you agree with a lot of those? It's just like, you know best, right? Yeah,
Robb (29m 2s):
I I think that they're again, a good coach or when you get used to looking at that stuff, you'll use it to track trends, but you don't do, you know, go by gospel with it. And one of the challenges that I see is that people will start doing kind of squirrely activities to try to like max out their scores and, and they'll just do all kinds of funny, weird stuff, you know, to try to get a better score. And it's not necessarily doing anything to improve their recovery, they're just kind of finding whenever there's parameters to a game, people will figure out how to cheat the game, you know, so Right. But, but then, you know, folks like Peter Tia who I, I really respect, he's super smart.
Robb (29m 47s):
He makes the case that like he is far more diet compliant when he wears a cgm, a continuous glucose monitor, which is another one of these, these interesting tools because he, when he has the CGM on, he documents it into his Excel spreadsheet every single day and he just lives and dies by this beautiful flat curve. And if he cheats on his, you know, off of the, you know, what he, what he expects himself to be eating, it screws up his Excel spreadsheet and it makes him crazy because he's kind of a neurotic, you know, data geek. And so for him he finds that he's way more compliant wearing his CGM than he is not because there's actually some oversight there.
Robb (30m 31s):
And he's neurotic enough about wanting great numbers that he, he's far more compliant on his nutrition than he is without it. Like if he's not wearing the cgm, it's like, oh the kid's birthday cake and this thing and that thing end up going down the pie hole because it doesn't get documented. And so he is much more likely to deviate off plan.
Brian (30m 50s):
Yeah, that makes sense. And even just simple documentation of just writing by keeping a journal or you know, just logging your food in aro meter or whatever. I think, I think that can go a long way even if you just do it for a few weeks just to see where we're at.
Robb (31m 5s):
That's kind of the funny thing. And like I, this is why I've been hard pressed to really get excited about too many of the wearables, the Morpheus platform kind of being the exception because I wear it while I, I train and I find really great insight with that. But I find that people get some benefit from these things for a couple of weeks, maybe a month or two. And it's kinda like, eh, you know, like you got out of it what you needed and that's not really what these wearable companies want you saying.
Brian (31m 36s):
Right. They want you. Right.
Robb (31m 38s):
Yeah,
Brian (31m 38s):
Yeah, yeah. Because I, I use the CGM for a while and it's like I still have a few in the whatever, you know, still have a few to
Robb (31m 45s):
Push your packs. Yeah, yeah.
Brian (31m 46s):
They last for two weeks and it is, it is interesting. And that sort of leads to sort of my next question and we were getting into it is some other markers maybe cuz I just did a bunch of blood work and people might be asking, well, you know, what should we measure and what, what would you say some of the, I have some thoughts on it, but what would you say some of the main panels that individuals should, should look into?
Robb (32m 13s):
Yeah, I, I have some good friends who run this, this thing called Precision Health report. And this is very similar to what we used at the Reno Risk Assessment Program, which I, if folks aren't familiar with that, this was 10 years ago now almost, where we did a program trying to find police and firefighters at high risk for type two diabetes and cardiovascular disease. And we used this thing called an L P I R score, a lipoprotein insulin resistant score. And so it tells you your LDL particle count and it looks at some other parameters, like some stable inflammatory markers that are different than C reactive protein.
Robb (32m 55s):
It looks at some advanced glycation end products and it, it, it's, they've been able to dial this thing in and they, they've correlated it with like the craft patterns that people have talked about, you know, with like blood sugar responses and whatnot. But it gives you like a 95, 90 8% accurate tenure risk profile for both cardiovascular disease and type two diabetes. And I really like this thing because it's, I think the consumer cost on an, on the L P I R score on this, this lipoprotein risk index is something like 110, 120 bucks or something like that. Like it's pretty cheap and it, if, if nothing else, I think it's something to establish a baseline.
Robb (33m 39s):
Like you, you know, maybe you check that every two years or something like that to just see if you're maintaining or, or if things are kind of going in a squirrely direction. And if folks are eating a lower carb diet, if they're doing some intermittent fasting, like a one meal a day, not infrequently, people will find that their lipoproteins and their cholesterol go sky high on that. Like Dave Feldman has characterized it as the lean mass hyper responder. And I, I love Dave Dave's a great guy, but I, I asked him, he, part of his theory around that lean mass hypers responder story is that he's suggesting that because these people are fat adapted, that the lipoproteins are increasing to provide more energy transport.
Robb (34m 22s):
And I asked Dave how much of the energy that we could experience could be represented by lipoproteins. I did some back of the envelope math on it and it's not that much like it's a rounding error compared to triglycerides and glucose and and whatnot. I think what's going on there is that folks might have some subclinical hypothyroid from, from maybe a little too low calorie, a little too low carb and, and just bumping 50 grams of carbs a day instead of like five grams of carbs a day can, can cut lipoprotein and cholesterol levels in half for, for a lot of folks. So I like that precision health report program and that it, it just provides this really concrete view of our metabolic health and it's, they have great reports, you understand it really well.
Robb (35m 13s):
Each report is reviewed by a, a living breathing physician where they, they actually, you know, give you an interpretation on it. And so I really like that. And I mean, doing hormone testing is great. There's a lot of different stuff that you could do, but I am really biased towards that L P I R score Precision health reports data because I think metabolic health is kind of our most important asset that we could cultivate. And this thing gives you a damn good insight into that. And, and again, even folks that may be insulin sensitive but are getting some really elevated cholesterol and lipoproteins from a, a low carb diet, maybe you ditch the heavy cream outta your coffee and you do more olive oil and nuts and all of a sudden you, you end up fixing that problem or you do more monounsaturated fats plus maybe 50 grams of carbs, 75 grams of carbs, you still feel just as good as what you did at the 30 grams of carbs.
Robb (36m 12s):
But your cholesterol and lipoproteins are cut in half. I I think that it's a really great tool for being able to figure out a lot of stuff like that and it casts this huge net you, you know, as far as whether you're high carb or low carb, it gives some really great insights into where you are on that metabolic health spectrum.
Brian (36m 30s):
Yeah, it's interesting you brought that up cuz actually after our first conversation I did it, I did one and I was just looking through it. Yeah, they, and I remember they did a, they do a call with you, I believe after like, like a consult. You're seeing this, there's another company called Merick Health. Oh,
Robb (36m 48s):
Okay.
Brian (36m 48s):
Yeah. Merick Health. It's, it, I did a full panel through them and then you do, you could do a consult and they can make recommendations from there. So it's, it's interesting these companies are are, are popping up. My, actually a personal question for me is, you know what I've noticed, and this is on every, literally every blood test and when, even when I just do occasionally like the CGM and stuff is my fasting glucose is like always like, not always, but like 1 0 5, like last night, I, I yeah, it's like, it's interesting and I don't know, I don't know if it's a gut thing. It could be a gut thing. I don't know what it is.
Brian (37m 28s):
Do
Robb (37m 29s):
You, have you checked your A1C as well?
Brian (37m 31s):
Yeah, A1C is like, I was actually just, I just pulled up blood work I got done. Yeah. Here actually watch this. Let's do this. I'll share, I'll share the screen and if people watching on YouTube they can, I can, they can see, let's see, here we go. This one, can you see that Rob?
Robb (37m 57s):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is from this, this other outfit.
Brian (38m 1s):
This was actually just done, this was through Merrick. I did this through me and then I, and then I had a buddy of mine who does a lot of functional blood analysis, put it into his sort of optimal, you know, cause it's like, you know, the functional, the ranges that you get, and this is another whole topic, but Right. The ranges that you're gonna get from a normal blood test that you do, they're gonna give you these ranges that are for just like the general population,
Robb (38m 22s):
Right?
Brian (38m 23s):
And so these are, these functional ranges on the right are more for like, I would say like getting it to be outcome optimal I guess you could say. Right. Let's, I was, and this what, this is what also made me think about getting a little bit, adding some carbs in is looking at the thyroid
Robb (38m 45s):
Just a smidge low. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brian (38m 47s):
Just a smidge low. And he mentioned getting some whole whole food carbs in there and seeing how that helps. And, and it also mentioned I did a hair mineral test and this is on your company as well, which got me into doing, adding some LT along with a few other things, but I was a little bit dehydrated as well. Testosterone not bad, right?
Robb (39m 9s):
Yeah, yeah.
Brian (39m 10s):
6 26
Robb (39m 12s):
And the free is pretty solid. I didn't see an A1C in there, which yeah,
Brian (39m 19s):
I'm gonna go,
Robb (39m 21s):
That would be the thing that would be interesting to, to know, you know, because our, our, that
Brian (39m 30s):
Fasting, right? The, the here's the glucose, the fasting, and I know fasting glucose is, you know, fasting, insulin's probably the more
Robb (39m 39s):
Important piece to
Brian (39m 41s):
Look at. Yeah. Which should be here unless we didn't put it in here. Oh, there it is. 4.1,
Robb (39m 49s):
Which is a little high. It's a, it's higher than what you would
Brian (39m 52s):
Use. Oh, there's, there's a1c. Okay.
Robb (39m 54s):
Okay. Yeah. That's higher than what I would like for sure. So that, that's some interesting stuff. And, and what's what's intriguing about that is, you know, in low carb, bland people will be like, okay, we'll quit eating broccoli because the fiber in the broccoli is causing the problem. And it's like, no, like that, that no, what folks oftentimes miss is that if we are eating in a way that is stressful, then the liver will still dump plenty of glucose into our system. If, if it's sensing that we're, we are under stress, and this is what interestingly where undereating eating two in infrequently, I'm a big fan of, of time restricted eating and whatnot.
Robb (40m 39s):
But all of these things can be stressors, right? And when we start daisy chaining, you know, low carb plus intermittent fasting plus one meal a day, like something that could have been, and again, it depends on the person. Like if you were 70 pounds overweight, type B computer programmer, pretty sedentary, that might be a great protocol until you get down to the level of leanness that you are at now. And then that is maladaptive now. Like you might need to eat more, more frequently to, to just tell your body like, hey, we're good. Like, we're not actually starving. Like we're, we're plumbing food is coming in, we don't need to be in a stressed state and whatnot.
Robb (41m 20s):
And so those are the things then that I, I think you start looking at. And it, it's funny, this, I don't agree with a ton of the repeat stuff, but I, I think that they're onto something in that a lot of folks end up undereating and this is a, you know, in this weird circularity deal, low carb is really easy to undereat on, which is one of the benefits of using it as a tool to, to lose body fat initially, you know, and to, to potentially restore metabolic health. But if it's taken too far than it, it, it could be maladaptive for the individual for sure.
Brian (41m 58s):
Yeah, no, so I I I, I agree. I think, like you said, these are all stressors and that's something that, so I'm, I'm, I'm gonna do blood work. Let's see, this was done, have a date on it, it was done like three months ago, four months ago. So I'll probably do another one maybe in a month and see, you know, where everything's at. But yeah, no, I mean, since I've had j on, I, I decided to go down this route and just see how, how it would affect, you know, thyroid function and things like that.
Robb (42m 28s):
Right, right. I think that's smart and, and it's, I think the really important thing there is that you have kind of a known concern and then you're doing a specific intervention, right? In the hypothesis there is like, maybe I'm undereating, maybe I'm either calories or carbs or combination. And if that's the case, then we should see an improvement in thyroid and we should see before any of the like statins and even like Zia, the stuff that, that sequesters cholesterol in the gut and we excrete it in the feces ages ago, folks were sometimes prescribed low dose thyroid if they had high cholesterol levels, because thyroid really dictates a lot of what's going on with our lipoproteins and, and cholesterol.
Robb (43m 17s):
So you, so we've got a good hypothesis there that we can test. And then, you know, at the end of this thing, okay, you've bumped up calories, five, 600 calories a day, you're eating, you know, a hundred, 110 grams of of carbs, your sleep improved, your HV improved, your thyroid bumps up a little bit and your trig triglycerides maybe go up a tiny little bit because your triglycerides were like super low. But then your lipoproteins, your, it's specifically like the a o LDL P ends up plummeting and it's like, oh, okay, we, we were on point there. The the bugger sometimes is like, no, none of that work. It didn't do a goddamn thing. I know. And you're like, oh, okay, what do we do now?
Robb (43m 57s):
You know? But yeah. Yeah.
Brian (43m 59s):
And I wonder too, like, I, I think I would, wouldn't you say like three to four months of doing this, like that protocol that you just spoke of is probably a good amount of time to, to
Robb (44m 10s):
Absolutely. I, I think like 30 days for most people, it's usually long enough. If one cool thing about Dave Feldman's work looking at these lipoproteins that I think it opened many folks eyes to is that the lipoproteins are way more label way more changeable than what anybody really thought. And you know, I guess some of the caveat with that is like somebody losing significant amounts of body fat, their blood work can look like garbage when, when they're really offloading a ton of fat and cholesterol and, and their body is shifting into this kind of fat burning centric mode because of, of ca some calorie restriction in, in the clinic that I'm, I'm a part of, it's still in Reno, we used to do initial blood work and then we would work up a plan for people and then we would do blood work at three months in, in six months, we ended up ditching the three month blood work because frequently at that point people looked horrible and, and so, and they would kind of get freaked out.
Robb (45m 14s):
Whereas at six months everything starts normalizing and looking a little bit better. So I, I think that the month is usually enough time to get a snapshot of what's going on. But again, we have to have a little bit of context there. Like if somebody's losing huge amounts of body, body fat, we may see things worse at, at the three month point. And so we may actually, you may check it again, but, but have the understanding that when you're really going through this massive transformation, things may look worse initially versus, versus better. But I don't think that would be the, the situation with you. We should be able to get a sense of that within like eight weeks or something.
Brian (45m 51s):
Okay. Yeah, that's what I figured. So I'll probably do one here in the next month and we'll see, we'll see how things improve, you know, but again, going back to everything, it's like, I think it, it's just important to, to know where you want to go and then have a measurement, do measurements on yourself and, and you know, it's, it, it's, it's a bit, its a bit of a guessing game with all this, but there's so many, you know, there's so much great testing out there now. It's like, yeah. With precision health reports and you know, you name it. I guess from that standpoint, let's talk a little bit about, cuz one of the things that I came up with me and even with my wife, is dehydration. And I think, and it's, it's interesting cause I talk to a lot of people now that do hot yoga, you know, and everyone's like, oh, drink water, drink water, drink water.
Brian (46m 38s):
Let's maybe touch on like how important minerals are, and I know which with your company element t that was part of the reason why you started it.
Robb (46m 45s):
Yeah, yeah. You, you know, it's, it, it's interesting when you look at hydration with, try to go into it with fresh set of eyes. And what I, I did when we, we, I became aware that that electrolytes were probably a way more important feature for a lot of people, particularly folks on this kind of lower, lower carb side of the, the eating story. I cracked open a guy textbook of medical physiology, and this was an old one. Like I had it in my undergrad, like I, I forget which edition it was, but it it was published in 86 or something like that. Okay. Maybe, maybe nineties, some, some somewhere around there, late eighties, early nineties.
Robb (47m 30s):
But I, I looked, looked up hydration and, and it defined hydration as both the body water, but also the electrolytes that associate with, with that water. And somewhere along the line, we've just stripped out the electrolyte part of that story. And it's only been about fluids, you know, and, and water intake. And when we think about like our, our, the way that we produce energy for everything, whether it's a nerve impulse, muscle contractions, you know, we have that Creb cycle, TCA cycle, electron transport chain, all of that stuff is largely driven by the modulation of sodium potassium pumps. We've got more sodium, you know, outside of cells, more potassium inside of cells.
Robb (48m 13s):
There's this gradient that's created and the return of that gradient is how we make action potentials to, to fire muscles, to fire neurons, calcium and magnesium are players and all that stuff. But really the sodium and potassium are kind of the, the, the real workhorses with this. And there's no, the only parameter that I can think of physiologically that is as tightly regulated as electrolyte status is pH like if, if somebody ends up unconscious in the emergency room, the emergency room physician is gonna look at blood glucose because, you know, maybe they're in a a hypoglycemic event, they're gonna look at blood pH and they're gonna look at electrolytes.
Robb (48m 59s):
What's interesting though is that our blood sugar can vary over huge magnitudes and we can still live, like it's not good for us to have a blood glucose of 400, but we'll, we'll survive that, at least transiently and whatnot. But pH if it varies up or down just a little bit, you'll get very, very sick or die electrolytes the same story. So along the line to getting out of WAC with our, our, you know, kind of optimized electrolytes status, you start getting decreases in cognitive function and fine motor skill in, in, you know, heart, heart activity.
Robb (49m 43s):
You know, the, the correct fluid balance within the body will cause the heart to contract in kind of an optimized way. It's kind of like a trampoline being bounced and sprung, you know, like the preload of the heart and all that type of stuff ends up getting optimized with a correct fluid balance. So those electrolytes, it's funny, for so much of my career I kind of knew that they were important, but it was, I would look at a million different things before thinking about sodium and electrolyte status in people. And it was a complete afterthought to even think about this. And then in talking to some friends of mine that are really good coaches and clinicians in just working with people day to day, they really put this back on my, my radar.
Robb (50m 32s):
And another one of the things that I I dug up was this reality that like low carb diets, fasting, intermittent fasting, there is this process called the nature recess of fasting, the loss of sodium due to fasting, any type of diet that takes us from a higher glycemic load to a lower glycemic load. And the funny thing, this could be a vegan diet. Like if you're eating a standard American diet and then you shift to like chickpeas and lentils and stuff like that, your glycemic load is gonna plummet, your insulin load is gonna plummet even though it's still a, a fairly high carb diet and you will lose a bunch of sodium as a consequence of that because your, your, your body tends to retain sodium in lockstep to our relative insulin levels.
Robb (51m 16s):
And so, again, I know I kind of bounced around a lot on, on all that stuff, but the electrolyte status is just so damn important for, for how we we look, feel, and perform. And the, the kind of cool thing about it is that if one is a little bit off in electrolytes, especially sodium, like if you just do six ounces of pickle juice, like you're feeling a little off, you feel like you might need like a, an espresso before you go workout or something, you do six ounces of pickle juice, you mix up a little bit of, you know, a half a teaspoon of, of salt in some water, maybe put some potassium chloride in there too, or do something like element that has the sodium, potassium and magnesium in it.
Robb (51m 59s):
Five minutes later you feel markedly better. Like you, you, you're like, oh, I wasn't hungry, I wasn't needing caffeine. What I needed was some salt. And, and then everything starts working. So that's been kind of a, a cool feature of our success is that when people try element, if they're feeling off, they end up feeling better within like five or 10 minutes. And so there's this really tight feedback loop that I haven't really experienced with any other type of type of supplement other than maybe like taking caffeine or something like that where you really, okay. Yeah, I definitely notice this. Like I take creatine, but I don't know that I've ever noticed a change one way or the other. Like when I look at the clinical data on it, it's neuroprotective, it's antioxidant, it's good for muscle mass as you age with all these benefits to it, but I've never noticed taking it or not taking it.
Robb (52m 51s):
I just take it because it's cheap and you know, the data suggests that it's probably better to take it than not. Whereas if, if I'm a little, I can't tell you how many times, even since founding the company element, I'll be feeling like shit around like 1:00 PM and I'm like, oh, I'm kind of tired. I don't know if blood off. And my wife's like, if you had any electrolytes today, and I'm like, damn, you, you know, and I'll go mix up a batch and, and drink it and then I, I feel better afterwards. So it's a, it's a simple experiment. And again, it doesn't have to be element. It could be pickled juice, could be your own home brew, like whatever you wanna do with it. But it's one of the most profound levers that I've found that people can pull in feeling better almost immediately.
Robb (53m 33s):
And maybe the only people that aren't appropriate for that is if, if somebody's hypertensive, like if they do have already a high blood pressure, it's not really gonna help them to, to add more sodium to the mix. But that said, if the person does any type of nutritional tinkering where they, they lower their glycemic load, they're probably gonna need some electrolytes on the back end of that when they get more metabolically healthy.
Brian (53m 57s):
Yeah, I mean I think it, it's probably for most people, but, but more importantly, people probably who are really conscious about what they're eating, avoiding the people that are avoiding the, the, the high sodium fast food products and, and the people that are maybe working out and doing hot yoga and sweating a lot outside, those are probably the people I'm, you know, I'm sure you're, you know, I don't know what percentage of your customers are like that, but I'm sure that's a high percentage.
Robb (54m 23s):
It it is. And the funny thing is that 85% of the sodium that Americans consume comes from processed
Brian (54m 30s):
Foods, right?
Robb (54m 31s):
So then if you shift to a minimally processed diet, your sodium intake plummets and your glycemic load plummets, which means that your need for sodium likely dramatically increases. And it, it, it's interesting that in traditional cultures, like my wife's Italian and they have all these, you know, like pepper and chin and olives and salami, like these, these salty things that are usually on the periphery of most meals. And then with the, within like Japanese cuisine, they, in Korean kimchi and different types of salted, fermented foods, miso, a lot of these traditional cultures don't really salt the main part of the meal all that much, but they have super salty side dishes, the, the chutneys and stuff like that in Indian food where you just add a little bit to the meal because it's basically like, you know, super spicy flavored salt and you know, mixed in with a little bit of of vegetables.
Robb (55m 31s):
And so I think even in traditional cuisine there's been that answer to that. You know, like the main dish oftentimes isn't that salty, but some of the accompanying, you know, side dishes are oftentimes really, really salty and people end up balancing the meal out that
Brian (55m 47s):
Way. Yeah, no, that's a good point. And I was just telling you before we went on, I be, my pre-workout is we have like a, you know, I make quality coffee, right. With quality beans, organic, and, and then I'll put, put it in a shaker bottle with a bunch of ice and throw in that element chocolate salt. And it's, yeah, it's, it's
Robb (56m 8s):
Pretty,
Brian (56m 9s):
Yeah, that's my pre-workout. I'm not like wired, you know, like I, I've had a few guests on like Meow Hensman and some individuals, and it's just, the studies behind these pre-workouts is really, honestly, you probably just need a little bit of caffeine if you want and, and you're off your go, right? Like Right. I think there's, you know, there's a lot of money to be made in that industry, so there's a lot of these pre-workouts, but I think if you keep it simple, do a salt with some caffeine and ready to go.
Robb (56m 36s):
Yeah. Luis Phyllis Sinor has, has advocated for the, the same, largely the same thing. Like if you want a little bit of like whe protein in it or something like that, maybe a little bit of mct. I think that there is an interesting case to be made for some branch chain amino acids from like a WHE protein in that peri workout period. But, you know, some sodium, little bit of caffeine. And the funny thing is a little bit goes a long ways, like the kind of optimized dose for most people on caffeine is closer to like 40 to 50 milligrams, which, you know, like a standard Starbucks cup of coffee is like 200 milligrams. So like people would be optimized doing like a quarter of the caffeine that they typically do.
Robb (57m 21s):
But that's a, that's a tough sell to get people to change that for sure.
Brian (57m 25s):
Right. Yeah. Gosh. Well this was great. I guess before we wrap it up, anything new with you as far as your routine? I know you said your, your eating routine has changed a little bit. Workouts, I know you're doing jujitsu. It's interesting, I don't know if you talked about last time, but like, I used to do Moai for a long time. I still do it. And I was like, God, should I get into the ground game and do jiujitsu it? Thoughts on a 40 plus year old getting into that? Well,
Robb (57m 57s):
You know, I, a lot of it depends on the school, like the school, that straight last gym, the, the organization I'm a part of, and this is for, for the folks that own gyms, whether it's a strength and conditioning facility, CrossFit facility or, or martial arts. If you run it like a fight club, it's gonna be really, really difficult to make ends meet. Like there aren't that many people that compete and, you know, get after it. And if you create an environment, especially if it's got a beginner's program, an on ramp, so like in, in a straight blast gym, you would start with what's called a foundations program. And it's like an 18 class deal where you learn the legit basics and you're not doing open rolling with people.
Robb (58m 44s):
You do a little bit of positional sparring and then your coach kind of watches you. And when you have a basic understanding of the, the overall flow of jujitsu, then you're usually given an opportunity to attend what's called a CAP class. It's a combat athlete program class. And the first three or four session roles that you do is with a black belt and they're teaching you some etiquette. It's like, and usually the etiquette is slow down, don't hurt me. Right. Don't hurt you, you know, and all that type of stuff. So if you have a good school that that does some stuff like that, I think that folks can plug in at, at any point. I'll be 51 in a, in a couple of months in theory, I'm knocking on the door to my black belt.
Robb (59m 26s):
And so, I mean, I've, I've been chipping away at this stuff pretty consistently for 10 years. Juujitsu is always hard, but it can be done in a way that isn't brutal and exclusionary, like we should be able to, to make this work for just about anybody at any, any point in time. I, I did MUI back in the day too, and absolutely love it. Still do love doing like pad work with a really good person who can hold pads. Well, you know what? It makes me look like I actually know what I'm doing when I have somebody who really knows how to do pads. But you know, the jujitsu is cool in that, one of the things that I find is that even in a well run school, which makes things more reasonable, jujitsu is just hard.
Robb (1h 0m 11s):
And and this is maybe true of like a CrossFit gym too. CrossFit's hard, it, it's fucking hard, you know? And the people who stick around are good people. Like they're used to doing hard things or used to suffering, and there's a certain ego trimming that occurs when you go in and you kind of get the shit kicked out of you day in and day out. It's like a humbling here and a little wind there. It's very humbling. Yeah. And the, the community and the closeness that I think grows out of something like that is so profound and so important. Like during c you know, like having that community that I could lean into was a mental health lifesaver for, for me, because I am a, a reasonably social person, but yet I work from home.
Robb (1h 0m 59s):
I live in a rural area. Like I could, if I wanted to not see another human being for months at the time, I could do that and I would, I would kind of go crazy. So I I really Where do you live? Where are you on the plane? Just
Brian (1h 1m 13s):
Outside Chicago.
Robb (1h 1m 14s):
You're outside Chicago? I don't, oh, how far are you from, oh gosh, what is it? Woodstock, Chicago. Okay.
Brian (1h 1m 23s):
Oh, Woodstock. So Woodstock that's farther
Robb (1h 1m 26s):
North. Oh, it's farther north, but not,
Brian (1h 1m 28s):
Yeah. Is there, is there a
Robb (1h 1m 30s):
Place you know of? There's a friend of mine, Dave Alpha, bj the funny thing, like Dan Hart is a great guy, but those guys are kind of savages. Like they, I don't know that they run exactly the school the way that I, I'm like describing it here, but it's a really, one, if it wasn't an onerous drive, like I would recommend those guys and I would call Dave and be like, listen, don't murder this guy like a good dude. So, but I think if you, you look around some characteristics of a well run school, they have a kids' program. They have morning, noon and night classes. If the school only has night classes, it's almost guaranteed to be kind of poorly run.
Robb (1h 2m 10s):
They're really catering to like the, the retired D one wrestlers that, that wanna Right. Continue doing grappling and stuff like that. But it, like, if they have a noon class, if they have morning classes, they're running it like a real business. They're professionals. Usually the noon and morning classes are the professionals. That's when the police, the, the doctors, the nurses. That's usually when the professionals end up training because they're able to go in before work or they, they go in during a lunch hour or something like that. And when you go in to kind of check the place out, do they have some older folks in there like, you know, do they have some people in their forties, fifties, sixties and and stuff like that. And I think that's a great indicator of, of a well run school.
Robb (1h 2m 52s):
But I mean, those are the big things that I've been doing. I I've really been doing a lot of work in the regenerative ag space, you know, trying to, to talk about this idea. Like there's a, a notion out there that grazing animals, cows are the most injurious part of, of climate change and that they need to be shut down at all costs. And I, I don't think that that's accurate. And that was where, where the whole book and film Sacred Cow came from. And, and there are claims that, you know, animal products are, are super injurious to our health and they're unethical and everything. And so I do a lot of work trying to unpack that.
Robb (1h 3m 34s):
And maybe I'm crazy, maybe I'm wrong, but I I, I do think that these topics like climate change and global health and all that are really important. And if they are important, it's critical that we really understand what the true story is there because we have limited resources. And so if we're going to do something about this stuff, we should probably focus on this stuff that, that is really important. And I, i, if you want to improve an areas land and prove its carbon sequestration and stuff like that, I think that actually grazing animals are a really powerful tool if used properly. And so that's what I've been spending a ton of time is fighting that battle. And I, I have to say, when, when it's all said and done, I will have probably made about $3 an hour writing the, the book Sacred Cow and, and pushing and promoting that.
Robb (1h 4m 25s):
There's, we, we keep having people say, you guys are chill for big meat. And I'm like, man, I'm, I'm waiting for the payday because it, it hasn't happened yet, but that, that's a lot of the time that I, I put into is, is working on that type of stuff.
Brian (1h 4m 39s):
That's cool. Yeah. And you're seeing a lot of those companies pop up. Like there's a few companies I order meat from like force of nature and I know you do stuff with white, maybe white oak pastures, right?
Robb (1h 4m 50s):
Yep.
Brian (1h 4m 51s):
Yeah. And I guess one closing question would be like, I probably asked you this the last time, but we'll see if, I'm sure it's a different answer. What would you give a tip to an individual that's maybe looking to get back into shape? Maybe they're in, you know, middle-aged and looking to get their body back. What first step would you give that person?
Robb (1h 5m 9s):
One is like, congrats for recognizing that you're, you're at the beginning, you know, maybe you're right at middle age. It's kind of funny in that that is the, like, it's almost cheating getting into health at, at middle age because you're still young enough to really get in and kick some ass. You're still young enough to make some massive improvements and you didn't use your body up in your youth. You know, like your back's not screwed up from power lifting as a teenager. True. You didn't break your nose three times doing tie boxing and have a a, you know, detached retina. Like I've, I've had, so you're entering into this thing potentially with kind of a fresh slate and you could really like kick ass the rest of your life.
Robb (1h 5m 54s):
The, the, the research on the, the middle aged person getting healthy is that it's as good or better as, as if you had been fit your whole life. And I would like when you, from a health and longevity standpoint, God, even for smokers, like if you can get people to just quit smoking five years down range, their, their likelihood of all these diseases, lung cancer or heart disease, it just falls off a cliff. So even if we've abused ourselves, even if we've done all this stuff and you're like, man, I I I haven't taken good care of myself, it doesn't matter what you've done, it matters what you will do. And it, it's like cheating in a way because when everybody else is on this down slope, it's like you're putting on muscle, you're getting lean.
Robb (1h 6m 42s):
And at this point where like a lean fit middle-aged person, you're kind of like, oh shit, he or she is like kind of impressive, you know, like it really stands out. So, you know, I would just commend people for recognize and really encourage him, give it a year, like fucking commit to it for a year. Like really? And, and look at what the return on investment is, see how you look, feel and perform. See the, you know, how much better you do in your body. See how much better you do as a parent or a grandparent or in your work or what have you. You know, the extra energy you have and just like the, the, the enjoyment that you have in your body, and I think you'll stick with it for the long haul.
Robb (1h 7m 24s):
And then what you decide to do isn't nearly as important as just doing something. But, but that said, I think doing a little bit of strength training and if that means like a machine based circuit deal that you do a couple of times a week, that's great. Doing a little bit of low intensity cardio, you know, more days than not, if you can pull that off some way that's great. And then once or twice a week, something that, that really gets your heart rate up that that really challenges you. But it doesn't need, and probably shouldn't be like a CrossFit workout every single day, you know, the white buffalo in the sky, but once a week, once every 10 days like doing something or we're like, wow, that was a dose. Like I really felt that, I feel it in my lungs. I was breathing really hard.
Robb (1h 8m 6s):
That is just a, a remarkable recipe for effective aging. Like you're probably gonna live a long time and live healthfully. And what we, what we understand from the, the, the life and death vectors around that is that those folks tend to live really well and their health span tends to extend out and then they maybe get sick or get injured in the, you know, what ends up being the last couple of weeks of their life. And, and then they're, they're done. And, and the, for someone who watched my parents die over like a 30 year period where my dad, I did diabetic wound care on my dad and, and like they took his toe and part of his foot and all of his foot and a total below than the amputation and just the frailty and the loss of the ability to do all this stuff.
Robb (1h 8m 56s):
Like, it's horrible. It's horrible for the people around you and, and it was terrible for him. And so getting old sucks, but it sucks a lot less being in shape than it, than it does not in shape. So I, I would just encourage people to get in and do it and, and really look at it as you've cheated the system. You, you, you slacked off the early part of your life and, and, and you're probably gonna get away with a coup because you can get all of the benefit as if you had been in shape your whole life for the most part. Yeah.
Brian (1h 9m 28s):
Yeah. Those are all great points. And I, I love how you, you are correct in the sense that like, you know, now, I mean I've been lifting and I'm sure you've done, I've been lifting for 20 years and like I'm in the gym yesterday. I'm like, God, I'm like, what's going on with my thumb? What's going on with my finger? Like these little things that probably if you just start, when you're in your middle age, you're not gonna have those little things. You might, but you're probably less prone to those,
Robb (1h 9m 51s):
Right.
Brian (1h 9m 54s):
But you go, you get through 'em. But no, those are great points. And then sticking to, to it for like at least a year, like you said, like I think that's the one big thing a lot of people do is they, they're like, oh, let's get going. You know, we're getting the new year coming up and it's like a month or two and then, you know, they even go too hard for too quick and then they end up just falling back into their, as opposed to just going slow for a long period of time.
Robb (1h 10m 17s):
Yeah. Yeah.
Brian (1h 10m 20s):
All right, Rob, this was great. I appreciate you coming on. Best place for people to find you,
Robb (1h 10m 27s):
Rob wolf.com is where most of what I, I do, it still pops up. I do a fair amount of writing for Element, so drink element.com. I, we have a great science blog over there and we cover all kinds of stuff, not not just electrolyte related, but fasting and intermittent fasting, different takes on, on nutritional approaches. So drink element.com and rob wolf.com.
Brian (1h 10m 52s):
Perfect. Yeah, put those in the show notes and thanks again for coming on, Rob.
Robb (1h 10m 56s):
Thanks Brian. Thanks man. Take care.
Brian (1h 10m 58s):
Yep. Thanks for listening to the Get Lean E Clean podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine and I appreciate that. Check out the show notes@briangrin.com for everything that was mentioned in this episode. Feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member who's looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again, and have a great day.
